Unfavoured Child

ON MOST MORNINGS SINCE 1985, Madan Lal has walked one lane in Delhi’s Jhandewalan area, to get to his fruit shop, which faces the Mandir Dargah Shri Baba Sir Ratan Nath Ji, known locally as Har Shri Nath Mandir Dargah. The shrine is dedicated to Ratan Nath, a disciple of Gorakhnath, an eleventh-century mystic whose writings became the basis for the establishment of the Nath monastic order. Ajay Bisht, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, who is popularly known as Adityanath, is the current head of the Gorakhnath Math, which is part of the sect. 

In recent years, an imposing structure towers behind the shrine—the newly reconstructed Keshav Kunj, the Delhi headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Over the decades, Lal witnessed Keshav Kunj, once a humble two-storey building, transform into three grand towers. He also saw the expansion of the famed Jhandewalan temple, situated to the left of Keshav Kunj. “Har Shri Nath temple was always like this,” he told me, referring to the shrine. 

On 29 November last year, Lal was greeted by a large crowd as he approached his shop in the morning. The police had barricaded the road to his shop from both ends, and devotees of the shrine had gathered around the perimeter. The authorities were carrying out a sealing drive, he learnt. According to him, the drive began at 7 am, and no one was allowed to enter until 8 pm. When they were finally let in, they saw that while the shrine remained untouched, an area of around two thousand four hundred square yards, which the shrine was known to be allotted, was sealed. Shiv Chawla, one of the devotees who was present at the site, told me the police also lathi-charged the crowd, many of whom had begun protesting. The police detained about thirty people, including him. The devotees were in disbelief. They repeatedly emphasised that this was a “Sanatan sthan”—site of the eternal religion—and not a “dargah,” even if it was named so. 

Gorakhnath and Ratan Nath were known to be more egalitarian and less orthodox in their time, and the Nath sect welcomed people from lower castes and Muslims at one point in their history. However, today the sect is largely aligned with the Sangh’s views and ideology. This did not protect them from the harsh police action that day.

Chawla and other devotees claimed that the sealing was carried out at the behest of the RSS, which, they said, wants to occupy that space for its newly redeveloped Keshav Kunj. Rajat Aneja, the lawyer representing the mandir–dargah, also said that he had heard that “it has been done at the behest of RSS.” When I asked for proof, he said, “On the ground, everyone knows.”